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Natural Birth
Keb2127
member
what was the hardest thing for you...
Keb2127
member
I am having a natural birth for my daughter in June, but I was just interested to see what was the hardest thing you moms had to go through when you were giving birth.
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Re: what was the hardest thing for you...
I think the thing that made it hard for me was not knowing - not knowing how long it would take or just the fact that it would take a long time (40 hours). I think that made the pain and whole process difficult b/c I kept thinking something was wrong with me b/c I was progressing so slowly. Each time the contractions seemed to strengthen and be on top of each other, i thought for sure I was going through transition - and nope, I wasn't there yet.
I have said, since the birth, that if someone had just said to me "Look, it's going to take 40 hours" the whole thing wouldn't have been a problem - I would have thought to myself, wow - that sucks - but it wouldn't have been that bad.
This is how it was when I received the water papules. The birth assistant said to me straightforward: "It's going to hurt like a b*tch. There will be six of them, and by the 3rd one you'll be cursing us out and begging us to stop. But they are only effective if we do all 6, so don't ask her (the midwife) to stop. It will hurt really bad for about 2 minutes, and then the next 2 - 3 hours will feel great."
Everything she said was totally true. Well, except that knowing they were going to hurt really bad and knowing there would be six of them - I actually didn't curse them out or ask them to stop b/c I could prepare myself to get through it.
Thinking back, the pain of labor wasn't so bad. It was painful, but I've experienced much worse pain in my life when I shattered my ankle, or when I hiked to the top of Kilimanjaro which included an 18 hour straight day of hiking. But the mental anguish of not knowing when it would end or why it was taking so long and not knowing how much longer it would be - that was the hardest thing for me.
To be quite honest I was not prepared for how badly it would hurt. I know every labor is different and I think I just got blessed with a really painful labor
I wish I'd done hypnobirthing or something to help myself deal with the pain. I felt like I didn't know how to handle anything and I felt very "alone"
We also had a sh!ttastic recovery due to post partum hemmorage/hospital trasnfer (from birth center) and DS being in NICU for five days. The emotional rollercoaster due to all that was by far worse than the pain of childbirth though.
I am TTC now and hopefully next time I will have a much easier time and no hospital transfer!
Good luck
Loss #6 2014 Loss #7 (chemical) 2014
~DS Born! 2009~
~DD Born! 2013~
Pushing - with DS1, I pushed for 4+ hours, but he was posterior and not coming out, and I had a c-section. With DS2, I pushed for about two hours, and most of the time was a flashback to pushing with DS1. I was really convinced I was going to have another c-section pretty much until he was crowning. I felt like I didn't know "how" to push most of the time, either, though it obviously worked out in the end...I don't know if we'll have any more kids, but I would be curious to see what pushing would be like with a successful VBAC under my belt...
Anyhoo, I think the biggest thing is to make sure you have some sort of realistic coping mechanism in place, be it yoga breathing or Hypnobirthing or what have you, because labor is a lot of work. Definitely don't underestimate how hard it can be!
DS2 - Oct 2010 (my VBAC baby!)
I think the pushing was the hardest part. I pushed for 2 hours but the midwife said that was probably good because it stretched me out and prevented me from tearing. My baby was 8 1/2 lbs. Something in my mind kept telling me that my insides were going to rip apart from pushing the baby out. I also had to get past the burning part that I knew was coming. I think I held back because I was afraid. I just had to get over that hump. So once the baby's head was all the way out, the rest was a piece of cake. And I felt wonderful afterward.
The transition was painful for me because it went very fast. I went from a 2 to a 9 in just a few hours. So it the good part for me was that my labor was short and didn't hurt much at all until the last 2 hours, which was when the baby was making his way down the birth canal. You really have to relax and let your body do the work. Deep breaths and laying on my side really helped me.
I want to go natural again with my next baby. So that tells you it wasn't that bad! I felt like I could accomplish anything after that!
Good luck to you! Just be prepared and really practice relaxing through the contractions.
Oddly enough, I handled labor pain far better than I thought. It was bad, but I never thought it was absolutely unbearable. I just wanted it done and over with.
Length of labor with nooooo sleep. 30 hours active labor that decided to start at 2:30am, probably about 10 of that was hard labor (3 hours pushing too). Soooooo tired. Although I found out just how much I can run on fumes. Even worse, I delivered in the am. NO sleep in post-partum either until maybe 16 hours after that. So, awake 48 hours.
The intermittent monitoring (see post above). Sitting down and sitting relatively still for it was not fun, no matter how much the nurse tried to accomodate.
The anticipation of getting the heplock (yes, I am a needle pu$$y).
The hardest thing for me was fighting against the urge to push. For all three of my births, I had really early urges to push - my body was literally taking over and I had to fight it so I didn't push against my cervix which was no where near dilated enough. With my second, the urge started when I was about 3 cm dilated
With my last - it was the 50 minute car ride to the hospital during transition...I waited too long at home.....oops.
DS was sunny side up which gave me horrible back labor and I pushed for 4.5 hours until he finally flipped around and came out the right way!
My laboring was actually pretty fast went from 6min apart to 2 min apart in about 30 min and started pushing about 5 hours after the actual strong contractions began. (Had mild ones that were far apart and irregular for about 4 hours before that)
The back labor sucked but was fine as long as I could stand/move around. At 10 cm she needed me to lay down on my back so that she could break the water bag the rest of the way and push back a little lip of cervix. It was horrible. But once that was over I was free to be wherever I wanted. Oh, and when they were pushing the fetal monitor into my side, during contractions, it was really annoying, I just wanted them to leave me alone! (but I knew they had to)
Pushing for that long really wore me out but I was so glad that I had brought honey sticks, I think they force fed me more honey than I have ever eaten in my whole life
But they really did help!
Don't worry, your body was made to do this and you WILL find a way to cope. During contractions the strangest things helped to distract me (trying to remember penguin migration cycles and the hypnobirthing mantras, who knew!)
What!?! An emergency c-section without meds??? OMG!!!! You poor girl : (
I had two hardest parts:
1) My hospital required 20 minutes of continuous monitoring when we first got there. So it was really hard to lay in bed and not be able to move around much.
2) The last three pushes were pretty painful...the Ring of Fire is very real!
Other than that, it honestly wasn't that bad. I was expecting worse.
The pushing was way harder than I expected. Its like the last thing in the world you want to do at that time because its so hard to push the head out. But there's also no choice, and its the only way out so you just do it. And scream like hell, or at least I did.
The other hard thing for me is that I expected I could handle the contractions better than I did. I had taken hypnobirthing, and after about 4 hours, had trouble keeping up with my breathing techniques because they were so painful. The MW and nurse kept telling me I was in early labor, and that it would get worse, but I was closer to transition as I my whole labor was only 10 hours start to finish - 5 1/2 in the hospital - and they assumed I was going to be there for a lot longer..
-The required 20-minute monitoring when we got to the hospital. Horrible to be lying down on the bed like that when all I wanted to do was rock away on my yoga ball.
-The not knowing. Not knowing how long it was going to last, if it was normal to feel that way. If it was normal that I started my contractions at 1 minute apart and when from 2 to 9 cm in about 3 hours. I just didn't know and I didn't have a doula to reassure me...
(Pushing was the best part for me. Such a relief and finally something I felt I was able to control.)
Eleanor Noelle - 18/05/12 Claire Elisabeth - 16/-5/10